


Cataclysmic

by maelidify



Series: Space Interludes [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 18+, Angry!sex, Anyway this hurts, F/M, I Have To Cope Somehow, Pre 5x01, wherein I make assumptions about their breakup, wherein there is absolutely no communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:23:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelidify/pseuds/maelidify
Summary: She’s looking up at him, half angry, half looking for permission for something. For what—?Oh.





	Cataclysmic

**Author's Note:**

> Just a personal thing but please don't read my smut if you're a minor. Thanks!  
> Enjoy the suffering. 
> 
> X

First, she says, “I hate you,” but she doesn’t mean it. He knows she doesn’t mean it. It would be so much easier if she did.  
  
It’s the middle of the arbitrary night, and Emori is standing in front of him, looking exhausted and holding onto a bowl of nutritional glop, and this sneak attack isn’t fair because Murphy’s developed a _way_ to deal with visitors, you see.   
  
It’s personalized. He sleeps-doesn’t-sleep-tries-to-sleep in that hallway like some sort of animal about to attack because guess fucking what? He doesn’t know how to be a person. But he knows how to drive them away.  
  
With Raven, it’s simple. Yeah, she gives a shit, and he tries not to tear at her emotional walls _too_ much, but he knows when she’s losing patience for his self-pity and he knows how to wear on that. When he asks her to leave, she usually does.  
  
With Bellamy and Echo, it’s physical. He needs someone to punch and when they step into his space, he figures he might as well. He won't delude himself into thinking he can actually hold his own against either of them, anyway.   
  
With Harper and Monty, it’s verbal. It’s fun to see how many new ways he can make them wince, make them yell, make them decide he isn’t worth helping. He understands people _really well_ , you see, and the little fears and insecurities he’s seen build up in the two of them? Enough to fuel a ship.  
  
But this moment is cosmically unfair because with Emori, he hasn’t developed a system. He hasn't needed to because, in the three months since they ended things, she hasn’t tried to visit him. Until now, anyway.  
  
“Join the club,” he says after a small, bitter pause. He’s driven her to the point where her words are possible, even if they aren’t true. She wants to believe them. It drills through his chest with a dull ache— the space between them, her joy at the stars, the darkness eroding at him day after day after day.  
  
Anyway.   
  
“Did you swing by just to tell me that?” he continues, ignoring the pull of her gravity, the familiarity and simplicity of _her_ standing next to _him_ , the nagging feeling that they belong like this even though they don’t anymore. He doesn’t meet her eyes but she isn’t looking at him so it’s just as well.    
  
She shoves the cup of algae at him. “You haven’t eaten in three days. You haven’t _let_ anyone give you food in three days.”  
  
“So you volunteered? How uncharacteristically self-sacrificing.”  
  
Her eyes snap up and then away; something dark flashes over her face. The words hurt her, which is what he was aiming for even if he swiftly regrets them. He needs her to leave.  
  
She won’t look at him lately. He gets it; she found strength and community here. He only found ghosts. (He wouldn’t want her to look at him anyway. She’s been so bright up here in the darkness of the ring, and when she glances at him, that light drains from her face. He hates himself for that. He’s part of that club.)   
  
“Just take the damn food, John,” she says quietly and _oh,_ he can see it now. This is one of her bad nights.  
  
Funny how he used to get her through those.  
  
“Emori,” he says, gingerly taking the cup and setting it on the floor, “are you—”  
  
“You don’t get to ask that anymore!” she says, the burst of emotion expected and unpleasant. “You _left_ me, you left _this—_ ”  
  
“Like hell,” he growls, and it's so easy to fight and yell and stand next to her, so hard to be the mess that he is and know that's all she sees anymore. It's all fucking tragically intertwined. “Who left who? You didn’t need _this_ anymore, you knew it, I knew it, everyone did.” And it’s an oversimplification of something he doesn’t know how to explain to her, the darkness and his own inability creeping up on him more and more every day and now they’re standing closer to one another and he still doesn’t know how to tell her _I didn’t mean to get between us with these angry things inside of me_ and he reaches out and takes her hand without thinking about it.  
  
“So you just _decided_ that was how I felt?” She doesn’t yank her hand away but she finally glares up him and he stares back even though it hurts. He probably deserves it. “Remember when you used to ask me things, when it was us—?”  
  
“Back when it was us,” he says lowly. This is why they don’t talk. This is why they can’t talk.  
  
She’s looking up at him, half angry, half looking for permission for something. For what—?  
  
Oh.  
  
Well, it _is_ one of her bad nights.  
  
He kisses her before he can think about it too hard and feels her gasp a little against his mouth. Her face is wet. He pulls away. “Are you—?” 

  
“Shut up,” she says through gritted teeth. “Don’t talk. We either do this or we don’t.”  
  
“Try to be a little more vague,” he says, and kisses her again, her response more active this time. Her body pressed against his in all the familiar ways, her teeth stinging his lip angrily. Yes. _This_ he can do. He growls and bites back, the monster he knows he is, and pulls her hard against him.  
  
If he can make her gasp, he doesn’t have to think about making her cry or, worse, making her build wall after wall to separate the two of them when all he needed was…  
  
Anyway, his hands are under her shirt where her skin is warm and comforting and not his anymore but he runs his fingers up her spine anyway, around to her breasts and she shoves away from him for a moment to remove her clothes.   
  
Her back to him, he does the same. “Eager,” he remarks, watching the play of artificial, dimmed light on the back of her neck. He wants to kiss her there, so he does, running his tongue over a familiar scar. All of her scars are familiar. Maybe that’s why she spins around and backs him into a corner of the hallway, palming his erection and scoffing a little when he shudders.  
  
“ _I'm_ eager?” she says, thumbing his head, and it’s almost like slipping back into the things they used to be, but they don’t dwell on it.  
  
When they wind up on the floor, he crawls over her, trying meet her eyes but they're closed, they’re always closed to him in some way or another these days, and so he pushes into her, kisses her neck and her mouth and shoulders, does everything he can to make himself _feel_ something, to make her feel him, harsh and present and inside of her and _here here here_.  
  
She gasps into the rhythm. Good. Her arms are wrapped around him, her right hand tangled in his hair, her left at the small of his back, urging him to keep going, pressing into his skin almost painfully. Maybe not almost. Maybe everything is pain because that’s the only thing he has a fully-developed capacity for, pain in all of its different faces, in all of its various, exquisite forms.  
  
And Emori? She’s the best pain he’s ever known.   
  
He tangles both of his hands in her hair, tugging her head back so he can kiss her throat again, hard, needy. Let her try to explain that to their friends. He loves her throat, loves—  
  
The swiftness of his orgasm surprises him, but it shouldn’t. He hasn’t gotten any in a while. Even before they broke up, their walls were too closed to one another for this. He gasps against her neck and kisses her mouth, trying to prolong it, the harsh, cataclysmic feeling. She whines a little as he softens inside of her and he knows she’s not there yet so he runs his fingers along her clit for a time, soft and hard, glaring down at her until she lets out a shudder and a small, bright gasp.   
  
That brightness in her eyes stares up at him for a moment.  
  
Then her gaze shifts and uncertainty settles into her expression. “John,” she starts, but she doesn't finish the sentence. She lets his name hang there, useless. Then she jerks coldly away from him, indicating for him to move, her hands releasing him.   
  
He rolls off of her and stares up at the ceiling. She’s unmoving next to him, so far away. There's too much here that they don't know how to touch. “So,” he says, “I guess you got what you came for, huh?”  
  
The words come out more harshly than they’re intended. He always does this. He can tell his tone hurts her as she stands up in the quiet dark. He watches her climb coldly back into her clothes and misses each bit of skin as it disappears, each bit of _her_ as she disappears. She doesn't say anything.  
  
So he makes it worse. “Because if I'm just a convenient way to relieve tension before you get back to work? I can accept that.”  
  
Her gaze is distant, empty. “Good to know,” she says softly. She's still so close he could reach up and tug one of her hands.  
  
He tries to quell the inexplicable rage and frustration swelling in him like a wave. He's done this. He'll keep doing this. “So nothing's changed.”  
  
“No,” she says. “I guess not.”  
  
He wants to sneak a kiss against her left hand like he used to after sex. He doesn't. He turns away instead and doesn't watch her leave.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ...........sorry


End file.
